In April 2012, 210 million Americans were active online, spending about 29 hours on average browsing the web. Google remained the top web brand by total audience in the U.S., with 171 million unique U.S. visitors, while Facebook's visitors averaged the most time on the site per person (7 hours, 9 minutes). Americans visited a wide variety of websites in April, 95 unique domains on average in April, and more than half (117 million) visited Travel websites during the month.

Average U.S. Internet Usage for April 2012

Metrics

Total

Sessions/Visits per Person

64

Domains Visited per Person

95

Web Page Views per Person

2703

Duration of a Web Page viewed

00:01:05

Online Time per Person

28:56:40

# of People Who Went Online

210,638,000

# of People who had Internet access

275,865,610

Read as: 210 million Americans were active online during April 2012.

Source: Nielsen

Top 10 Web Brands for April 2012 (U.S., Total)

Rank

Brand

Unique Audience

Time per Person (hh:mm:ss)

1

Google

171,291,000

1:56:06

2

Facebook

151,411,ooo

7:09:42

3

Yahoo!

142,682,000

2:22:39

4

MSN/WindowsLive/Bing

126,142,000

1:30:56

5

YouTube

125,796,000

1:30:13

6

Microsoft

92,664,000

0:42:50

7

AOL Media Network

84,298,000

2:30:13

8

Amazon

75,101,000

0:32:38

9

Wikipedia

74,504,000

0:19:08

10

Apple

72,278,000

0:54:45

Read as: During April 2012, 171.3 million unique U.S. people visited Google websites.

Source: Nielsen

Travelers head online as Summer Vacation approaches

Whether consumers were making their plans for summer vacation or simply finding their way around town, over half of Internet users visited Travel websites in April 2012. Google Maps was the top web brand in the category during April, with 79 million unique U.S. visitors, followed by other popular mapping sites like Mapquest (29.6 million) and Yahoo! Local (15.2 million). Visitors to Google Maps returned frequently, visiting the site about 5 times each on average, logging well over 1 billion pageviews on the site.

Looking towards Memorial Day weekend in the U.S., travellers planning trips a little further from home also headed online to make plans, visiting sites like TripAdvisor, Expedia, and Priceline Network to plan their trips (respectively 13.2 million, 12.9 million, and 12.2 million unique visitors each, respectively). Millions more booked airfare on sites SouthwestAirlines.com and other airlines sites, as consumers searched for the best travel deals, with about half of visitors to TripAdvisor also visiting Expedia during the same month and a third also visiting Priceline sites.

Top 10 Travel Brands for April 2012 (U.S., Total)

Rank

Brand

Unique Audience

Time per Person (hh:mm:ss)

1

Google Maps

79,374,000

0:10:52

2

MapQuest

29,590,000

0:07:26

3

Yahoo! Local

15,247,000

0:03:40

4

TripAdvisor

13,241,000

0:07:19

5

Expedia

12,933,000

0:09:08

6

Priceline Network

12,219,000

0:10:47

7

Bing Maps & Local

10,815,000

0:05:34

8

Travel Ad Network

10,792,000

0:06:54

9

Southwest Airlines

10,245,000

0:13:09

10

Orbitz Worldwide Network

8,587,000

0:06:57

Read as: During April 2012, 79 million Americans visited Google Maps using their browser.